


mære mearcstepa

by dissembler



Category: The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman
Genre: Blood Drinking, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:41:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21838414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dissembler/pseuds/dissembler
Summary: In a remote spot in the Outer Hebrides, Bod receives an old friend.
Relationships: Nobody "Bod" Owens/Silas
Comments: 6
Kudos: 48
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	mære mearcstepa

**Author's Note:**

  * For [csi_sanders1129](https://archiveofourown.org/users/csi_sanders1129/gifts).



The boy looks out of the window and all there is for him to see is darkness. Even the ghosts have taken shelter tonight, from the wind and the snow. They hide in the very barrows and circles he is searching for, they keep their secrets. 

The others had thought him strange, when he had told them that he meant to stay in Cladh Hallan despite the winter. His three fellow students, along with the two professors, had each been desperate to escape the cold for Christmastide and they had left him. Now, he thinks perhaps he should be regretting it, desolate as it is out here. Alone and cold, despite the fire roaring. The only living thing in the landscape or at least the only human being for miles around. The sheep have been brought in, you see, the ghost of a shepherd told him so. But all this, mostly, is why he was reluctant to leave: the barrier here is thin, he can _see_ again and hear and he has found he can even fade should he need to. He is losing sensitivity to cold again, gaining again his dark-sight again, he feels young again — an odd thought for a boy in his twenties, a student, to have — and it makes him happy, though it makes him alone.

***

he is hungry, he had crept into a barn and stolen an animal, brought the white of it over the white far enough to dull the screams and keep the blood that flies from sending men behind him, but it has not sated him. he is a black line in the landscape, a blot, a corruption. there is smoke in his nose, he follows the scent. 

***

The boy leans in to stoke the fire and hears a whistle, a hiss. The coals flash bright red and a voice from beyond the grave speaks through them “ _Balach! Thig cunnart. Bi sàbhailte agus bi faiceallach_.” The shepherd has taught him enough of the language to understand the salient words: he is _'balach'_ , boy again, ' _cunnart'_ is danger. He has not heard this voice before but trusts its provenance. It bids him be safe and careful. 

The farmers, yet living, had left him a gun. He takes it up.

There is one door and there are two windows, back and front; he has checked the latches on both of them but has not shuttered them. This way he might see his _cunnart_ coming. He wishes, not for the first time, that the long dead would learn specificity but this he knows is a modern thing to want. In the old days an elder voice could give a warning in the vaguest of terms and have it heeded because the younger would not dare to ask questions even if he knew what to ask.   
  
The boy just thinks his questions now, since the voice is gone. He thinks, what is this danger? flesh or phantom? is it wild or waiting? is it after him or would anyone be as good? is it just hungry or is it bloodthirsty?

The boy has been reliably informed that he himself is a murderer, though his accuser has no memory of it, he wonders if he has a right to be afraid; he tightens his grip around the gun. 

There is a mirror — old but not ancient, 1800s he would say but he’s not inspected it — leant against some books on the shelf, he seems himself reflected in it, warped and warmly lit by the fire. He wonders if the _cunnart_ will show in it when it comes, he wonders if the fire-voice has gotten it wrong and that one man’s danger is not his after all. 

All his senses, the old ones that he is relearning, all of them are pulling him different ways. His soul says friend, the hairs on the back of his neck say otherwise. He wonders if this is what animals feel when the humans who raise them turn to slaughtering them; a tearing in two, emotional rending before the physical. He drags the single armchair — old, again, but not ancient — before the door and crouches behind it. 

The air in the room seems to bend in anticipation even before the door opens.

***

he lets the cold in, unsurprisingly, it clings to him like a cloak as he stands in the doorway. the chair speaks with a familiar voice: close the door please, silas, and come in.

he knows that name

***

Silas looks at once exactly the same and wholly different, he still wears the same black, his features are the same and all there, but his body is contorted, his face a rictus. Or it is until Bod says his name and then he seems to sag, he drags the door closed behind him and pitches forward, pulling something clattering down with him as he falls. 

Bod abandons the gun and comes around to him. He puts his hands to Silas’ face — the eyes are closed, he doesn’t think he’s ever seen these eyes closed — and remembers the car hitting him all those years ago, the way his limbs had bowed the wrong ways until he’d put them back where they should be. 

Bod checks the joints, runs his hands over long limbs to find them whole. There is blood at the corner of the mouth, he uses his sleeve to wipe it away. 

“Silas?” he says, voice small and the body in his arms stirs slightly. “Silas, I would warm you up if it would help but it won’t, so what shall I do?”

Silas says nothing. Slowly, he unfurls and stands, ducking his head in the low-roofed cottage, missing beams narrowly. 

Bod says, “Silas?”

“Thank you,” Silas says eventually. “Bod, thank you. I apologise for disturbing you.”

“It’s fine,” Bod tells him. “I’m glad to see you. It has been a long time.”

Silas ducks his head. “For you, perhaps.”

They are sat side by side on the low sofa, Bod nestled into the furs and Silas perched on the edge.

“Witch spells are simple,” Silas says. Bod watches the sharp teeth as they flash in the dark. “I would be a monster again, the old self she knew centuries ago, until a mortal said my name. Thank whatever Gods may be that she did not know of you.”

"But surely you could have told anyone your name and have them give it to you?"

"No Bod, she knew that in the state she'd reduced me to I could not get close enough to a mortal to tell them. She thought to make me kill indiscriminately, to teach me a lesson for being so high and mighty with the veil."

Bod frowns. "Was she a bad witch?"

"Yes, Bod. As bad as any before her. An old world witch, not at all like your friend Liza."

"I'd forgot Liza," Bod says. "I wonder how she is.”

Silas looks at him strangely. 

"What?"

"She is much the same, Bod, though I had not reckoned that you would have changed so."

"I feel more like my old self here than I have since I left," Bod says and finds his voice a little petulant. 

Silas reaches out, and Bod stiffens instinctively, which he supposes proves Silas' point. "You've always been human, Bod. It's merely much more obvious now."

"It's only 'cos I'm human that I could help," he says, still petulant. A child again trying to prove himself.

Silas does not smile at him, but Bod feels smiled upon. He reaches again and Bod holds still. The pad of his cold finger traces down from Bod's temple to his jaw. He keeps it there, tipping Bod's face up to study him.

"You should not have invited me in," he says gravely. "You ought to have said my name and sent me on my way."

"It's cold," Bod says stupidly. 

Silas tilts his head to the side.

"I've missed you," Bod whispers. “You're the only one I know who's like me."

"We are little alike, Bod," Silas says, "you know that."

"You're the closest, then."

Silas drops his hand and Bod misses it, feels the warmth seep back into the place he'd been touched. Silas says, "Betwixt and between."

"Why should I have kept you out?" Bod asks, tempting fate.

"I have been a monster for a month," Silas answers without answering first and then, after a moment, "I am hungry, Bod."

Bod takes a breath. "There was blood on your mouth, I wiped it off."

"I should apologise to the farmer, I fear he is short one sheep."

Bod takes the opportunity afforded him to ask a question he has always had: "Is it very different?"

He knows that had he been ten again, or fifteen as he was when he left, Silas would not have answered that but as it is his ex-guardian looks into middle distance and says, low, "Like night and day, Bod. I have not fed from a human in many a year, even the witch's curse could not force me, but I have never forgotten the taste. It is like the finest wine, the warmest cocoa. Smooth and fine, sweet and full. Animals are closer to the earth, their blood reflects this."

Bod feels warm all over, filled with a trust that, though he recognises as not wholly his own, he does not balk at. He finds himself looking at Silas closely, the face is thin and white, Silas looks like a statue carved of bone or marble. His black collar stands high against the pale line of his throat. 

Bod looks up to find his own gaze mirrored, Silas' indescribable eyes fixed on his own neck. The air in the room shifts. "Silas," he begins. "If you asked..."

Silas opens his mouth and closes it. His eyes flicker up to meet Bod's. "This is a romantic impulse I would not have expected of you Bod," he says, almost but not quite chiding. 

Romantic. Bod tests the word in his mind and finds it fits. He is older now, he has done several things in the rhyme and many more besides: he has kissed a lover, he has kissed lovers who looked very much like Silas. His fellow students tease him occasionally, Bod Owens, they say, he likes them older. He hadn't known till now just how right they were, just what he was after.

"I broke the curse," Bod breathes, "let me do this too."

Silas says nothing but he lets Bod shift closer, lets him clamber across until he's sat on Silas' lap. Silas' eyes meet his and then drop to his lips, then to the well between his collarbones where his shirt swoops low. He feels the gaze like he'd felt the finger-tip, like a line of frost over his skin. He is warming to compensate, to anticipate.

Bod tilts his head to the side, "I trust you."

"Do you?"

"Yes," Bod says. "I know you were pushing, but you were only pushing me towards what I already thought myself."

Silas takes one of Bod's hands in his long white one and turns it, pushing up his sleeve to bare his wrist. 

"It will hurt, but I will stop," he says, and Bod is sure that only half of the statement is for him. 

Bod's other hand finds Silas' shoulder and he nods. "I know you will," he says and Silas bows his head, leaning close and bringing Bod's wrist to his cool lips. 

Though he is expecting it, Bod shudders at the first touch of teeth, the strange feeling of friction, so different to the soft touch of skin. The sensation distracts him so, and when the sharp bright pain of the bite comes it does so with no warning from Silas. 

Bod takes a sharp breath in. He feels lightheaded and strange already, and it hurts but doesn't. It's the most painful thing and the most nice. He finds himself humming, his free hand shifting from Silas' shoulder to the back of his neck, sinking into his hair. A liberty he never would have been allowed before. 

He doesn't know how long it's been when Silas finally loosens his grip on his hand, leaning away and watching Bod through hazy firelit eyes. As he comes back to himself it strikes Bod that he should mark this moment, Silas unbalanced. He has seen Silas out of control twice this evening, in two different ways, with two different causes. He certainly prefers this one to the monster in the snow.

Bod says, "did that help?"

"I think," Silas says slowly, passing his thumb over the two small wounds. "I think we have made another problem while solving one, Bod.” 

Bod looks down, sees his wrist in Silas' grasp, sees the way they are positioned, his knees at Silas' narrow waist, their bodies pressed together. 

"No one will come here until the new year," he says. 

Silas uses his wrist to pull him in. “You should not have let me in,” he says again. 

When Bod smiles he bares teeth.

**Author's Note:**

> HAP YULE


End file.
